Press release by the Central Statistical Bodies of the Autonomous Communities

World Statistics Day will be held on October 20, 2010, with the aim of raising public awareness of the many achievements of official statistics based on such values as service, integrity and professionalism.

The United Nations agreed to establish October 20 as the date to commemorate world statistics. For the first edition in 2010, the slogan is "Celebrating the Many Achievements of Official Statistics and the core values of service, integrity and professionalism". The idea is to honour the institutions and professionals that work on a daily basis to develop and disseminate public statistics. The public statistical bodies of the Autonomous Communities are, through this press release, adding their names to the celebrations.

The aim of official statistics is to provide governments, companies, researchers and society in general with high quality, reliable and impartial statistical information on which they can base policies, studies and research.

The Statutes of Autonomy of the different regional communities designate exclusive competences for statistics to themselves and therefore each of the communities are legally endorsed for the exercise.

Official statistics are developed by the autonomous communities to fulfil the increasing needs for information that reflects the decentralised structure of Spain. Autonomous official statistics offer positive specific characteristics: obtainment of sufficiently disaggregated information, proximity to the suppliers and users of information, implantation and maintenance of adequate sectorial information systems for the territorial structure, such as health, education and judicial information systems, the possibility of intervening in the design and creation of administrative records and the undertaking of material processes that offer sufficient territorial significance.

Official statistics are researched in accordance with the principles contained in the European Statistics Code of Practice and the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. Said principles pursue accuracy, reliability, accessibility and clarity of information. This requires advancement in the achievement of adequate independence for public statisticians, providing them with the resources they need to guarantee objectivity and impartiality.

Coordination and cooperation between statistical bodies is considered fundamental. The official statistical offices of the autonomous communities work in coordination on three levels: the statistical system itself, coordinating the work of the different regional public statistics units; the statistical systems of the other communities, through statistical workshops in the autonomous communities, JECAS, and the exchange of methodological experiences and thirdly the state statistics system through the Interterritorial Statistics Committee (CITE), collaboration agreements, the coordination of work groups for producing methodologies and data collection and exchange processes for pooling information. All of this provides society with a better service.

The autonomous statistics services dedicate increasingly more effort and resources to improving the quality and quantity of official statistics and to do this have increasingly more highly qualified employees. That way statistics can help to build an increasing fairer society.